Frantically, Bones Chagra fumbled for the door handle.
Bailey grabbed him by the hair. Chagra yelped as his head was jerked backward. Bailey's left hand tore open the front of his shirt.
'They made me do it,' Chagra cried.
Brakes squealing, the sedans blocked him in from behind; their doors swung open. Chagra pulled away from his grasp, flung the door open and vaulted out of the car. He ran and dove for cover behind Martin's car.
Travis Bailey pulled his gun. Checking the rearview mirror, he saw that men were shielded behind the doors of the sedan in the usual 'felony-stop' police configuration.
'It's over,' Carr shouted. 'We have you on tape. Place your hands on the steering wheel.'
Travis Bailey squeezed the butt of his revolver. He glanced down at it, then at the rooftops that started across Sunset Boulevard and extended south on wide streets to the Beverly Hills business district. The thought of bending over waiting for a swat in the Pascoe Military Academy commandant's office flashed through his mind, as did the memory of peeking out a dormitory window and watching his mother walk out the front gate of the Pascoe Military Academy. The wind had carried the smell of her cologne.
There was the sound of sirens in the distance.
He touched the barrel of the revolver to his temple.
'Don't do it!' Carr screamed.
Bailey pulled the trigger.
With the blast from the gunshot was the sound of breaking glass. As Bailey's bead slammed against the driver's window, Carr dropped his.38 to his side, left the safety of the car door and crept slowly toward Bailey's sedan. As he reached the rear fender, he saw the bullet hole on the blood-sprayed driver's window. Bailey was slumped against the steering wheel. Carr bolstered his weapon.
Jack Kelly walked to the passenger side of the car and peered in. 'Holy Mother of Christ,' he said. Carefully, he leaned in the passenger door, reached across the seat and touched Bailey's neck. He drew his hand away and backed away from the sedan. He looked at Carr and shook his head.
Higgins used the car radio to call for the coroner.
B. B. Martin handcuffed Chagra and shoved him in the backseat of his sedan. Having locked the car, he removed a rope from its trunk. By looping the rope around bumpers and door handles of the vehicles parked on either side of Bailey's sedan, he secured the crime scene. He got into his car, started the engine and drove over to where Higgins stood with Carr and Kelly.
Reaching behind him, Martin swung open the rear door.
Higgins climbed in the backseat next to Chagra and shut the door. He leaned his head out the window to speak. 'We'll book him in and see you back at the Field Office,' he said. He sat back in the seat.
'You said you were going to let me go!' Chagra screamed.
Carr nodded. B. B. Martin put the sedan in gear and drove out of the parking lot.
During the next two or three hours, police and emergency vehicles sped in and out of the parking lot. Various police brass, including Captain Cleaver and the Beverly Hills Chief of Police, arrived and departed, as did Special Agent in Charge Norbert Waeves and the Chief of Detectives of the Los Angeles Police Department. Delsey Piper broke into tears after seeing the body and was helped away from the scene by another policeman.
In the midst of the activity a doorman dressed in gray tails and an Austrian soldier's hat helped people in and out of Rolls-Royces and limousines. Carr noticed that some of the people arriving at the hotel pointed at the jumble of police cars. Others did not.
Coroner's deputies wearing olive drab overalls finally arrived and lifted Bailey's body onto a gurney, then covered it with a plastic sheet.
'I can't help but feel sorry for him in a certain way,' Kelly said. He stared at the body as it was loaded roughly into the Coroner's station wagon. 'Nothing is so bad that a man should take his own life.'
'He might have beat the case in court,' Carr said somberly. He continued to make notations in a small notebook.
A thirtyish man with suntanned features and a tailor-made suit approached from the direction of the hotel. He introduced himself as the resident hotel manager. Carr nodded and kept writing.
'May I ask how long you people plan to be here?' he said.
Carr stopped writing and looked up at the man.
'We're short parking spaces because of a studio party, he said.
Carr and Kelly both glared at the man. He turned and hurried back to the hotel.
NINETEEN
It was after nine o'clock by the time Carr arrived at his apartment that night. He heard the phone ringing as he unlocked the front door. Hurrying inside, he picked up the receiver. It was Sally Malone.
'I thought you might like to join me for a late dinner,' she said. 'No big thing.'
'Sure,' he said, though he wasn't hungry because of what had happened earlier. At her suggestion, they agreed to meet at a small seafood restaurant on the Santa Monica Pier that was an equal walk from either of their apartments.
Knowing she would never arrive anywhere before him, he decided to wait for her outside at the entrance to the pier. She arrived a few minutes after him, wearing a new jogging outfit. They touched lips and headed toward the restaurant, a tiny weathered building situated in the middle of the pier next to a bait shop. Its only identification was a flaking sign over the door that read Seafood. Inside, the tables and small bar were filled. They stood at the bar while a young T-shirted bartender whose nose was covered with a layer of zinc oxide served them drinks.
Though Carr felt like downing the drink in one gulp, he settled for a healthy sip. 'It looks like Jack's not going to retire after all,' he said because he couldn't think of anything else to say at the moment.
'I'm happy for him if that's what he and Rose want.'
The bartender pointed them to an open table in the corner. They took their drinks and sat down.
'May I ask you something?' Sally said.
'Sure.'
She shook her head. 'Never mind.'
'Go ahead and ask.'
'Would you have asked me to marry you that night if you hadn't been drinking?'
There was a pause while Carr sipped his drink. 'I'm not sure,' he said finally.
'Then I guess the trip was nothing more than a drunken fling.'
'I didn't say that.'
'You've never brought marriage up before or since.'
Carr fidgeted in his seat as he tried to think of something to say. 'Look,' he said, 'I asked you and I'm not going to back out on it. On the other hand, I don't think there's any real hurry at this point. No use rushing in-'
Sally gently reached over and put her hand over his mouth.
A few minutes later a lanky waitress who wore a T-shirt similar to the bartender's came and took their order of steamed clams and beer. The walk and the liquor had perked up Carr's appetite.
During the meal, Sally recounted what she'd learned from a recent health food seminar she'd attended (all meat contains cancer-causing substances) and gossiped about judge Malcolm's wife. Carr wondered, as he had before, if he could bear listening to such drivel every night of the week. But as the evening wore on and he continued to drink, he came to the realization that he probably could. She was his friend as well as his lover, and, he reminded himself, nobody is perfect. Not even-he thought philosophically-Carr.
Later that evening they walked from the restaurant along the dimly lit pier, taking in the sound of their footsteps on the wooden walkway, waves slapping and swirling against pilings and, faintly, from the business district east of the beach, a siren.
An elderly couple riding bicycles with tiny lights attached to the handlebars whizzed by them and continued into the darkness as they followed a cement walkway along the strand toward Sally's place.
